The undefeated Tigers are ranked No. 1 after winning the SEC championship. Quarterback Joe Burrow won the Heisman Trophy by a record margin.

Ed Orgeron was named the national coach of the year and passing game coordinator Joe Brady was the top assistant coach. Various players won various other awards.

But none of that will mean a whole lot if the Tigers don’t defeat No. 3 and defending national champion Clemson in the College Football Playoff Championship Game on Monday night in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

“Everything that we’ve done up until now is good, but it’s not great,” LSU coach Ed Orgeron said at Media Day on Saturday. “We want to be great. To finish the season strong with a win is our goal, and that’s going to be a tough task.

“But we didn’t look at it as ‘hey, man, we’ve got to go down there and win the National Championship, it’s going to be bigger than ever.’ We’ve got to play well enough to beat Clemson, and that’s been our focus. We’ve done that every week.”

Clemson also has had a remarkable season. It too is 14-0 and it will be seeking its third championship in four seasons. Its quarterback — Trevor Lawrence — is 25-0 as a college starter and led his team to a 44-16 rout of Alabama in last season’s championship game and brought Clemson back from a 16-0 deficit to beat Ohio State 29-23 in the semifinals.

“It’s always good to have experience, but we won the National Championship with a true freshman quarterback last year,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. “That was supposedly a disadvantage for us, a guy who hadn’t been there. So I don’t buy any of that stuff.”

Burrow has had the most prolific passing season in not only LSU history but also in SEC history and LSU is the first team to have a 5,000-yard passer, two 1,000-yard receivers (Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson) and a 1,000-yard rusher (Clyde Edwards-Helaire). Additionally Thaddeus Moss is having the most productive season ever by an LSU tight end.

“We have five NFL guys in routes every single snap, and it’s tough to cover,” Burrow said. “You kind of have to pick your poison. Anybody can get the ball on any play. We do a really good job of finding match-ups that are favorable for us.”

Jefferson, who along with Chase broke the LSU single-season record for touchdown catches with 18, caught 14 passes, including four touchdowns in a 63-28 semifinal victory against Oklahoma. He became the first Tigers to catch 100 passes in a season.

“I think Justin felt a little disrespected after the year with all the awards and wanted to prove to the country that he was one of the best guys out there,” Burrow said, “and I think he did it.”

Edwards-Helaire, who was limited by a hamstring injury against Oklahoma, declared himself 100 percent on Saturday.

Clemson has the No. 1 scoring defense and passing defense in the country and is second in total defense.

“You can tell that they have 11 really smart guys,” Burrow said. “They do a lot of different things on defense, and they have a really good coach (defensive coordinator Brent Venables) that makes it difficult for me and my eyes to look — pre-snap it’ll look the same and they’ll go to cover-two and cover-three on the same look.”

Lawrence has plenty of weapons as well, most notably former Jennings running back Travis Etienne, a two-time ACC Offensive Player of the Year.

The LSU defense was inconsistent for much of the season, but it has played much better in the last four games. It gave up 4-2 yards rushing and 614 total yards in a 58-37 victory at Ole Miss.

But in the four games since then it has allowed averages of 270 yards and 16.3 points, which includes games against Top 10 opponents Georgia and Oklahoma.

LSU has gotten healthier on defense and linebacker Michael Divinity Jr., one of the defensive leaders, is returning from suspension for this game.

“I think after the Ole Miss game, it was kind of a turnaround for us,” safety Grant Delpit said. “It wasn’t our best performance, and I think we sat down as a defense and just saw what we did wrong, understood that some teams might try to make those plays and run it against us again. And I think we just kind of lit a fire and started playing LSU football after that.”